Working nine to five can suck.
You might be working for a boss who is an idiot. You know he makes stupid decisions. When he's off making yet another stupid decision, it's you left doing all the work. As for job security - that's a joke these days. He can fire you on a whim.
So why not cut out the weak link? Why not go into business for yourself?
The reality, of course, is that starting a business isn't as easy as saying it. You'll likely work longer hours, for less money, and there are no guarantees. While your friends are looking forward to the weekend, you might not see a weekend for a while. Most small businesses fail in their first five years, taking dreams and savings along with them.
Everything has a downside.
However, many businesses not only survive, they prosper. They make their founders wealthy. Even if they don't make fortunes, they can provide lifestyle benefits that are near impossible to achieve with a regular job. There's a lot to be said for being the master of your own destiny.
To achieve that, it's best to start with some good advice.
Makin? Mistakes
I've been running my own small business for a decade now. Whilst it's been rewarding, and I achieved the goals I set for myself, there has also been a fair few missed opportunities and inevitable wrong turns. I jumped in blind, and like many in the search marketing industry, pretty much made it up as I went along.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
But I wished I had understood a few fundamental truths first. I wished someone had imparted some profound wisdom, and I wished I had been smart enough to listen. Come to think of it - they did, and I wasn't.
Such is life.
I?m in the process of setting new goals for the next few years. I'm restructuring. So I decided to reflect on the past, examine the good and the bad, and try to do more of the former, and less of the latter.
One of the problems I identified was that I was spreading myself way too thin over many projects. I have a *lot* of sites. I have domains I?d even forgotten I owned. I have domain names I keep renewing, vowing to do something with one day, yet never getting around to it.
In short, I was growing an awful lot of small pumpkins.
Getting The Fundamentals Right
I?ve decided to ditch almost all of what I have been doing in the past, and focus on a very narrow range of activities, one of which is working with Aaron on SEOBook.
One book I really wish I'd read when I was starting out - had it been available, which it wasn?t - is called "The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy To Grow A Remarkable Business". I'd like to share the central theme of the book with you, because I think it's a great lesson if you're thinking of starting a business, or, like me, optimizing an existing one.
It?s the lesson I wished I?d understood when I started. I certainly hope it?s of help to someone else :)
If You Want To Prosper, Learn To Grow Pumpkins
There are geek farmers who obsess about growing huge pumpkins. They are the hackers of the vegetable world. In order to grow a huge pumpkin - weighing half a ton or more - you can?t just throw seeds on the ground. You can?t grow a whole lot of pumpkins and hope one of them turns out to be huge.
You?ve got to follow a process.
And here it is:
- Step One: Plant promising seeds
- Step Two: Water, water, water
- Step Three: As they grow, routinely remove all of the diseased or damaged pumpkins
- Step Four: Weed like a mad dog. Not a single green leaf or root permitted if it isn?t a pumpkin plant
- Step Five: When they grow larger, identify the stronger faster growing pumpkins. Then, remove all the less promising pumpkins. Repeat until you have one pumpkin on each vine.
- Step Six: Focus all of your attention on the big pumpkin. Nurture it around the clock like a baby and guard it like you would your first Mustang convertible
- Step Seven: Watch it grow. In the last days of the season this will happen so fast you can actually see it happen
What?s this got to do with business? It?s a process for growing not just pumpkins, but businesses. Let's apply it:
- Step One: Identify and leverage your biggest natural strengths
- Step Two: Sell, Sell, Sell
- Step Three: As your business grows, fire all your small time, rotten clients
- Step Four: Never, ever let distractions - often labelled as new opportunities - take hold. Weed them out fast.
- Step Five: Identify your top clients and remove the rest of the less promising clients
- Step Six: Focus all your attention on your top clients. Nurture and protect them. Find out what they want more than anything and if its in alignment with what you do best, give it to them. Then, replicate the same service or product for as many of the same types of top client as possible
- Step Seven: Watch your company grow to a giant size
In essence, it?s about focusing on those things you do best. It?s about focusing on your very best customers, and ditching the rest. It?s about creating your own niche by identifying and solving the problems that no one else does.
None of this is new, of course. There are plenty of business advice books that say similar things. However, this is one of those great little stories I wish I had internalized earlier. Rather than grow a lot of small pumpkins, focus on growing those that matter.
Given recent changes at Google, I dare say a lot of SEOs - particularly those who run their own small sites - may be rethinking their approach. Unfortunately, the small guy is being squeezed and the rewards, like in most endevours, are increasingly flowing to large operations. Search conferences, which used to be the domain of the lone-wolf affiliate guy and mom and pop businesses are now jammed full of corporates and their staff. The entire landscape is shifting. New approaches are required, not just in terms of tactics, but in the underlying fundamentals.
It would be interesting to hear your lessons in business. What are the things you know now that you wished someone had told you when you started? Please share them in the comments.
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